


stop/start

by commovente



Series: SASO2016: bonus round 3 [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:03:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7291534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commovente/pseuds/commovente
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>No stranger to being left behind, it only made sense that some day Tobio’d be the one who does the leaving.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> written as a prompt fill for SASO2016, bonus round 3: gift tags. the original prompt is [here](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/14215.html?thread=5830791#cmt5830791).

Their relationship ends with as much inevitability and as little fanfare as it began. It’s not something anyone in their shared circles speak of; or at least, not something Oikawa’s overheard. Truthfully, it’s not something he and Tobio mention either, if they talk at all — Oikawa’s a retired player, now, still in the spotlight of the media but no longer at the forefront of the court. He wonders where he stands with Tobio now. He doesn’t think about where Tobio stands with him.

And perhaps it’s better that way. Perhaps it’s why they ended the way they did in the first place. Oikawa doesn’t talk about them, about him.

But he crosses his mind; sometimes fleeting, other times lingering.

So Oikawa doesn’t talk to him. It doesn’t mean he’s stopped thinking about him.

 

 

There’s nobody there when the knock arrives at Oikawa’s door. There is, however, a plastic bag left at his doorstep, a slip of something dark and soft spilling out as though overturned when its owner left, unsettled in the rush of their departure. Oikawa reaches to pick it up, eyes searching out a source he doesn’t expect to find, but still distantly hopes to see anyway. He doesn’t find anyone, and yet his hands speak something else entirely.

Reaching blindly for the bag at his feet, Oikawa ended up holding on to the something he’d seen start to fall out earlier, fabric giving way to a shirt, several sizes too small and many years too old to be new — Oikawa freezes.

He doesn’t need to look down to know what he’s holding but he does anyway, drawn by compulsion or weakness he hasn’t yet managed to kick. His face tightens even as his grip slacks on the Kitagawa Daiichi jersey in his hands, then in the air, pooling out at his feet, the number 2 a reminder, a twist in the gut.

Because it’s his number and his old school but Oikawa knows even before he slides the jersey back into the bag, carrying it back with him inside, that it’s not his jersey. It’s too tight around the shoulders, too long a hem. And he recognises it.

Oikawa doesn’t even wish that he didn’t. 

Whether or not he’d wish for this particular jersey here, with him, is another story.

 

 

He doesn’t throw it out, but he doesn’t take it out from the bag again. It sits there, an unworn skeleton he keeps at the corner of his desk, refusing to bury it like a childhood monster at the back of his closet. Maybe that’s why he finds the note, days and days later, scrawled onto the side of a packet of tissues also in the bag.

_I admired you once,_ it reads. The writing is terrible as ever, only legible to Oikawa’s eyes because he’s used to looking for the curves of the characters, kanji still clumsy after all this time. _I admired you once,_ past tense, set carefully aside, locked away from where Oikawa can return to it. Not that he would. Oikawa’s never believed in clinging onto the past so he doesn’t, doesn’t talk about it as he strides forward, forward, not a backwards glance even as he reaches new bends in the road, dead ends he marches right through.

And the thing is, Oikawa can’t even say he’s surprised, really. No stranger to being left behind, it only made sense that some day Tobio’d be the one who does the leaving. And that, too, makes sense, because Oikawa himself is no stranger to being passed by. Both of them chasing forward, both of them leaving behind. Both of them familiar with the shape of someone’s back as it rushes by them and past them.

Oikawa blinks. He scrunches his nose, remembering what he meant to do with the tissues in the first place. Opening the packet, he pulls one out to blow his nose, leaving the rest of the packet on his desk when he goes to throw the used tissue away. He returns to his desk, pushing the packet of tissues — note now ripped in half where he’d opened it — back into the bag. Resting where it is, it covers the 2 of the jersey, dark sleeves and a white back sitting unused in a bag. 

Picking the bag up, Oikawa walks to his door. He slides on his shoes and remembers to lock to the door behind him. He stops to wish a neighbour good afternoon before he reaches his car, programs his GPS, and doesn’t speak again for the rest of the day.

 

**Author's Note:**

> > I miss her more than anything else. In fact I think I might miss her more now than I ever loved her. If that phrase sounds strange, I'm sorry, but it's the best I can do now.  
> \-- Jonathan Carroll, _The Land of Laughs_
> 
> thank you for reading!


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